Slitherine

So I tried a game after the new update, and I already noticed that diplomacy in the early game is considerably more interesting. I found that for the first 40 turns it took much more consideration to get a relationship to the point where I could ask for open borders and trading pacts. I would have to choose which faction to praise, which led to a choice between buffing my economy and research using pacts with one faction or getting maps that could benefit my early war with another faction.

So I think it's a great start, that being said it would benefit from some tinkering. After about 40 turns the diplomacy stumbled into the same issue that used to plague it. Friendly AI's became maxed out at Generous, despite me having rejected the tribute they demanded several times (I had a weak military). It seems rejecting friendly tribute has no visible diplomatic repercussions, which encouraged me to simply ignore the demands.

I haven't played long enough to see the effects of the new fungi system on late game, but I can tell you that it definitely made early game expansion more difficult and interesting. I ended up having to get a marine to escort a former to the fungi that surrounded valuable food resources to clear it for my next expansion. It was tense and interesting.

I only know the 'new' version of the game, but I find the diplomacy too monotonous. The AI is repeating the same sayings all the time, and my possibilities to react are also sparse. On the other hand I do know that this is most of all a war-game.

jnpoint wrote:I only know the 'new' version of the game, but I find the diplomacy too monotonous. The AI is repeating the same sayings all the time, and my possibilities to react are also sparse. On the other hand I do know that this is most of all a war-game.

It's true that the AI repeats the same sayings constantly, but that's true in any 4X game. Possibilities are scarce, but most of the Civ games that did diplomacy right also had sparse diplomatic options. I think what matters more than quantity in this instance really is quality. Having fewer choices that are tweaked so that each choice has meaningful consequences will go a long way towards making diplomacy an interesting component of the game.

That being said, I do feel that the ability for a faction to ask other factions to join it's war would really benefit the game. Another thing that would help the game is if settling borders close to other AIs had diplomatic repercussions.

In my most recent game I played at the Easy level with low alien hostility because I wanted to get deeper into the technology and test out the diplomatic interfaces.

I found the AI diplomatic responses to be relatively straight forward and I was generally able to keep on friendly conditions with the AI if that was my goal. In this game I had one AI that attacked me repeatedly and peace offerings were rejected. I had an alliance with another AI and once it appeared that the aggressive AI was not going to give up my ally dumped me. I felt like there was no benefit to having an ally. I had expected my ally to come to my assistance with troops but that never happened. Later in the game I had an another ally (different AI) and they did offer me some money but no other assistance.

Is there an intent that an alliance partner will assist with troops or just money? Troops would be much more useful and would add more reason to use diplomacy. As it is I feel like you could pretty much ignore diplomacy other than a quick way to see the strength of your opposing AI's.

Perhaps this all changes if you play at medium or hard?

As far as I can tell, it doesn't change with difficulty. Well, their friendliness changes, but allies still don't send troops.

I agree with you. They should send help and they should ask for help too when they are at war.